CHAPTER III. 
THE WATER SYSTEMS OF FINLAND. 
Tavs far, while allusions have been made to dry land, 
much more has been said about water—canals, lakes, 
rivers, waterfalls, and rapids—and so it must needs be 
in an introduction to the study of the Forests and Forest 
Lands of Finland, according to the impression produced 
upon me by what I have seen there. 
Tn a treatise on the Grand Duchy by Dr Ignatius, that 
distinguished statistician, remarks: “Finland is not a 
country of mountains.” No! It is rather a country of 
valleys; and the evidence of this is, that it is a country 
of lakes ; and as all mountain systems have, as their com- 
pliment, a system of valleys, we find the thalweg of the 
valleys of Finland have given rise to several distinct water 
systems, composed of a series of lakes, connected by rivers 
or streams. Of three basins spoken of by Dr Ignatius, 
he writes :— 
‘The first of these basins’ [that of which I have reported 
what I saw] ‘comprises 120 great lakes and many thou- 
sands of small ones, all communicating with one another, 
and covering in all an area of about 10,000 square kilo- 
meters. These waters meet, as in a central reservoir, in the 
Saima Lake, and then clearing the Falls of Imatra, which, 
estimated according to the body of water, are the greatest 
in Europe, they throw themselves into the Wuoksi, which 
carries them down into the Lake Ladoga. The central 
reservoir of the waters of the East Tavastland basin is the 
Lake Paijinna, which has a length of 128 kilometers, but 
nowhere exceeds 20 kilometers in breadth. It pours its 
waters by the river Kymmene into tbe Gulf of Finland. 
